The Fear of Failure Is Your Friend

Lately, lots of my friends are struggling with depression or other mental health setbacks. Lots of it is triggered by a sense of failure. Looking at successful peers, popular social media accounts, and even older and more accomplished siblings, it’s so easy to get discouraged.

Failure is the Success In Progress

Albert Einstein

We live in a society of striving for perfection, and even though there’s more and more positive and nonjudgemental content, it’s still so hard not to judge and shame yourself.

No one wakes up in the morning with a thought: I want to be a disappointing human being. But fear of failure is powerful and sneaky, so we often end up not doing anything. Thinking that not taking action is safer than trying but failing.

So today I’ll share my endless and omnipotent wisdom [What!? Self-confidence is important ;)] on how to make the fear work for you and not against you. It’s based on my personal experience, and yes, I do realize I’m not a poster child for success but hey! We all are learning here and trying to figure things out. There’s no straight answer, no easy steps, and no bulletproof idea, it’s all about a journey. And if it is all about the journey we might as well enjoy it!

Things to know about fear and failure

Fear is a deeply wired reaction designed to keep us safe and away from harm. This is how our lizard brain uses fear to keep us alive. But the brain is simply a muscle, a tool, a processor, and while it’s doing an excellent job on day to day basis. It sometimes can cripple us if we don’t pay attention. See, for our lizard everything unknown and uncertain equals danger, and it will work its brain-ass off to keep us from harm.

Failure – there’s a deeply rooted misconception that failure is the end of the road. You-fail-you’re-done mentality. However, if it was true we would never learn to walk after the first fall. My point is that failure is an integral part of success, it’s impossible to succeed without failing at least once. Because this is how the learning process works. You try, you fail, you know what not to do next time, and you try again.

I’m sure you already heard this story, but I’ll just remind you. Do you know what this is?

A magical essence, able to fix everything. WD-40 is a must-have for every household. Do you know what the name means? WD stands for Water Displacement and number 40 is the number of times it took lab scientists to get it right. That means that they failed 39 times before they invented a substance that is still in use and doing wonders after 70 years. So ask yourself, how many times did you try?

Love your fear

Have you ever watched the Pixar movie “Inside Out?” They got it right. There is a multitude of emotions living inside us, keeping us alive. Fear is one of them. The key is not to dismiss it. You might feel angry, frustrated, or even blame your fear for stopping you from achieving your goals. It’s even worse when you blame yourself for it. Resentment is a road to nowhere. Be thankful for your fear because it kept you alive so far. But be aware that sometimes, it might be overreacting a bit, it’s just too good at its job.

Imagine that you are driving a car and fear is sitting in the back seat telling you to slow down even if you already driving 5 miles an hour. You can not kick it out because it will come back straight away. You can not gag it to shut it up because when it will release itself (and believe me it will) it will scream its lungs off. The only option is to acknowledge it and love it. Imagine yourself talking to your fear like it’s your best friend. Saying: I see you, I know you’re there, I understand why you are scared, but trust me I got this, we are safe.

This technique is so powerful it’s scary 😉 It works on other emotions too. But like everything in life, it requires practice. Test it out, you have nothing to lose and so much to gain. And I guarantee you, once you’ll see the smaller result it will feel so good, so empowering you will never stop doing it.

Don’t compare yourself to others

I know, I know, it’s easier said than done. But hear me out. You can not compare yourself to others because others are countless and you are just one person. It’s simple as that.

Compare yourself to you and you only. Measure your success based on your initial stats, if it’s better than before you are making progress. If it’s worse see if it’s just a fluctuation or if there’s anything you can do differently.

Be a disappointment

I think the biggest part of the fear of failure is the fear of disappointing others, your parents, your teachers, your friends, you name it. And I know how strong it is. But again, hear me out. There will always be someone that will not be happy with you. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will be a disappointment to them in some regard. But it’s not your problem. It’s theirs.

You are your own person, your life is yours and no one else can live it for you. You are not here to live up to someone else’s expectations, so unless you love punishing yourself over and over again by doing impossible and hopeless tasks, you have to stop. The only person that you owe anything, to is yourself.

Does it mean you will have to let some people go? Yes. Will it be easy, and painless? Hell, no! But you’ll have to do it anyway, it’s the only way. If you want to catch the wind in your sails, if you want to sail for your next adventure, you have to release the anchor first. Even if it means cutting it off.

But wait, does it mean that you’ll have to be a selfish prick in order to succeed? Absolutely not. Do not mistake care and kindness with selfishness. It’s just a basic rule of survival, if you want to be kind and helpful to others, you need to be well enough to do so. To put it bluntly. Put your goddamned oxygen mask first.

You miss 100% of shots you don’t take.

There are no absolutes when it comes to winning, but there are absolutes when it comes to failing, it’s doing nothing. Like Wayne Gretzky once said, You miss 100% of shots you don’t take. That brings me to the beginning of this post “ Thinking that not taking action is safer than trying but failing.“ Doing nothing is failing. The least you can do is give yourself a fighting chance at winning.

Keep showing up, put one foot in front of the other, embrace and enjoy the journey. And I guarantee you, once you find the right path, things will start to fall into place. It will happen before you know it 🙂

I see you, I love you, you got this!

p.s. In this post I used icons from my Self-care icon pack. Check it out!